Therapy for Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) in Stourbridge and Online Across the UK

The worry moves. When one concern settles, or gets pushed away, another takes its place. Work, money, health, relationships, the future: the mind scans across all of it and finds something. You know, on some level, that the worrying is not helping. But it is hard to stop, because stopping feels like dropping your guard.

That pattern is treatable. This page explains how.

What GAD Is

Generalised Anxiety Disorder is characterised by persistent, difficult-to-control worry across multiple areas of life, accompanied by physical tension and a range of associated symptoms including restlessness, poor concentration, irritability, muscle tightness, and disrupted sleep.

The worry in GAD is different from ordinary concern or useful planning. It is repetitive, hypothetical, and tends to escalate rather than resolve. It often feels compulsive — as if worrying is doing something protective — but it rarely produces useful action and rarely reaches a conclusion.

What sustains it is a low tolerance for uncertainty. The mind generates worst-case scenarios not because disaster is likely, but because sitting with not-knowing feels intolerable. Checking, over-planning, seeking reassurance, and avoiding decisions all provide brief relief from that intolerance, but they also reinforce it. The capacity to carry uncertainty without acting on it gradually erodes, and the worry expands.

What GAD Can Look and Feel Like

• Chronic, wide-ranging worry. A background thread of "what if" that moves across health, finances, work, relationships, and the future — often without resolution.

• Physical tension. Tight shoulders or jaw, a feeling of being braced or on edge, headaches, fatigue from sustained tension.

• Sleep disruption. Difficulty getting off to sleep because the mind will not settle, or waking in the early hours with worrying thoughts.

• Difficulty concentrating. Mental fatigue, distractibility, a sense of not being fully present in conversations or tasks.

• Over-planning and over-preparing. Spending disproportionate time anticipating problems, preparing for unlikely scenarios, or checking that things are in order — without a corresponding reduction in anxiety.

• Reassurance loops. Repeatedly asking partners, colleagues, or friends for confirmation that things will be alright. Checking messages or emails more than is necessary.

• Procrastination and avoidance. Putting off decisions or tasks because they trigger anxiety, or approaching them with a perfectionism that makes completion difficult.

• Knowing it is not productive, but not being able to stop. One of the most exhausting features of GAD: the awareness that the worrying is not changing outcomes, alongside the sense that dropping it is not safe.

 

Why Worry Keeps Going

Worry creates the illusion of control. It feels like preparation, like vigilance — as if thinking hard enough about a problem is a way of preventing it. In the short term, it reduces the discomfort of uncertainty. In the long term, it trains the mind to treat uncertainty as a threat that requires an urgent response.

The result is that the threshold for what triggers anxiety lowers over time. The mind becomes increasingly calibrated to detect potential problems, and the tolerance for sitting with any unresolved concern reduces further. Life gradually organises itself around avoiding the situations, decisions, and experiences that trigger the worst of the worry.

Treatment reverses this by targeting the intolerance of uncertainty directly, rather than the content of specific worries.

How Treatment Works

The approach is cognitive behavioural, integrating CBT and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Treatment begins with a formulation of your specific pattern: the domains that worry focuses on, the behaviours that are maintaining it, and the impact on daily functioning and on the things that matter to you.
 

Active treatment involves building a different relationship with uncertainty — learning to carry it without the compulsive need to resolve it through checking, planning, or seeking reassurance — and developing the skills to respond to anxious thoughts without being pulled into extended worrying. ACT contributes a values-based framework for re-engaging with the parts of life that worry has been displacing.
 

One useful distinction we make early in treatment: productive worry is brief, specific, and leads to action. GAD worry is extended, hypothetical, and repetitive. We preserve the former and directly target the latter.
 

Format: Weekly 60-minute sessions in Stourbridge or online across the UK.
 

What Changes

Less time spent worrying, checking, and seeking reassurance. Greater capacity to make decisions without needing certainty first. Reduced physical tension and improved sleep. More time and mental bandwidth for the things that matter. Progress is measured by how life is expanding, not by whether anxious thoughts ever arise.
 

Why Work With Me

I'm Christian Hughes, a BABCP-accredited cognitive behavioural psychotherapist with extensive experience across NHS, military, and private practice settings. Generalised anxiety is one of the most common presentations I work with, including cases where worry is long-standing and pervasive, GAD entangled with depression or physical health difficulties, and presentations where chronic worry has significantly shaped someone's sense of who they are and what is possible for them.

My approach integrates CBT and ACT, and is formulation-led throughout.
I work in person in Stourbridge, West Midlands, and online across the UK via Zoom.

Fees: Individual therapy: £125 per 60-minute session.
Location: Stourbridge (West Midlands) and online across the UK.
Availability: Daytime and limited early evenings.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Isn't worry sometimes useful?
  Problem solving an planning is useful, when it involves something within our control, and we make that distinction in treatment.  Problem solving and planning that is brief, specific, and leads to a concrete action. GAD worry is extended, repetitive, and hypothetical: it circles the problem without resolving it and does not produce useful action. The aim is not to eliminate all worrying thoughts, but to dismantle the unproductive loops while preserving the capacity for genuine problem-solving.

• Will I be told to think positively?
  No. Positive thinking is not the treatment for GAD and it is not something I use. The aim is to build the capacity to carry uncertainty and difficult thoughts effectively — not to replace them with reassuring ones.

• Can medication help alongside therapy?
  For some people, yes. A combination of therapy and medication is helpful for many with GAD, while others prefer to focus on therapy alone. I do not prescribe, and your GP is the right person to advise on medication options. The two approaches are compatible.

• How long does treatment take?
  Many people see meaningful improvement within 12 sessions. Long-standing or complex presentations, or those where worry has shaped significant avoidance, typically take longer. We review progress regularly throughout.

• I have worried this way for as long as I can remember. Can it change?
  Yes. Chronic, longstanding worry responds to treatment. People who have worried extensively for many years do make meaningful progress, though it may take longer and involve more work on the beliefs and patterns that have built up over time.

• What if my worry is about something real?
  GAD rarely involves worry about nothing. The concerns are usually about real things — health, finances, relationships — but the worrying response is disproportionate and maintains itself regardless of whether those things actually go wrong. Treatment addresses the worrying pattern, not the underlying concerns, which remain yours to engage with in a more workable way.

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Next Steps

If you would like to find out whether therapy for generalised anxiety is the right next step for you, a free 15-minute call is available to talk through your situation before committing to anything.

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